Educational reform in the Maltese Islands

Abstract

The political change in 1964, when the Maltese Islands became an Independent Archipelago, initiated a number of revolutionary reforms that the Maltese Education sector has been going through ever since. These last ten years have been extremely significant for Maltese Education, because of the several major measures and reforms that have been introduced. Their aim was to augment the country’s intellectual capital and provide improved quality education that will help all Maltese children to succeed. Replacing the questionable dichotomy of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ has been, for the past decade, part of an extensive drive by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment and the Education Division to reform the education system in Malta. This paper will present a historical overview of the educational reforms aimed at devolving greater responsibilities to the schools and in particular the establishment of school networks. It will also treat the kind of leadership that has helped to sustain this transition in Maltese Education, so that schools will ‘provide improved quality education in Malta’ (Galea, 2005: xii), and the implications of educational reform in the Maltese Islands.